Interesting graphic on Explosion of Media Channels (Nielsen)

From the recent Nielsen Total Market report comes this interesting timeline showing the explosion of new content delivery channels for video.

I'll have more to add from the report later.

State of the News Media 2014 - Pew's annual report

The Pew Research Journalism Project has just released its annual State of the (US) News Media report for 2014.  It's a big report with a lot of information, conclusions, and recommendations.

The report suggests that 2013 (and the early part of 2014) has seen the continuing transformation of the U.S. marketplace for news - on both the supply and demand side.  It's seen an explosion in digital news outlets, "bringing technological knowhow and new money and luring top talent."  It's seen the development of new and alternative revenue sources, the expansion of news into social media channels.  As a result, the way people seek and consume news is changing; the report suggests that "the level of new activity this past year is creating a perception that something important, perhaps even game-changing, is going on."

The reports overview identifies six major trends:

1. The expansion of digital news outlets is creating job opportunities, particularly in the form of international reporting.
2. The new money and digital outlets "may be more about fostering new ways of reporting and reaching audience" than developing sustainable revenue streams.
3. Developments in social and mobile are changing the dynamics of news production and consumption.
4. The new digital forms are fostering "new ways of storytelling," but bring both promise and challenge.
5. Local TV underwent massive change in ownership structures in 2013, with greater use of "shared content" in local newscasts.
6. News outlets are just beginning to recognize the shifting demographics of U.S. audiences, primarily in the expansion of Spanish-language content and outlets.

As I regularly do when these reports come out, I hope to do more focused posts on the various areas and topics covered by the report.  In a change for this year, Pew is publishing the full report in sections rather than as a single document  In the meantime, I'll post links to the report below.

Sources -  State of the News Media 2014: Overview,  report by PewResearch Journalism Project.
State of the News Media 2014 Complete Report

Hacktivists target Big Media

Activist hackers from the self-proclaimed Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) are going after big media outlets, recently broaching security and changing content at the Associated Press, Agence-France Press, Reuters, the BBC, NPR, Time, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (among others).

"They are going after media, because they want to propagate their message," said Jason Lancaster(, a senior analyst at HP Security Research). "When they attack media organizations, even if they are not successful, their message is, in a way, still being propagated." 

In most cases, the hackers used simple phishing techniques to gain userIDs and log-in passwords, then exploiting the limited security of social media and internal computer networks.

The breaches have demonstrated that many of the third-party widgets, plugins, and Web services used by media companies come with inherent risks. Publishers' pages are a mashup of a variety of third-party content, making the security of any displayed page reliant on the weakest link in the Web supply chain, says Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of Veracode, an application-security firm.
"These websites pull ads and widgets from all over the place," he says. "People have no idea where all this data is coming from. I don't think a lot of people have thought about this threat model." 

 Just what we need...
Another reason not to believe everything you read...

Source -   How Hacktivists Have Targeted Major Media Outlets,  dark reading

Infographic - Trust in Media

Edelman Trust Barometer 2012